How the Conduit Exception Affects the HIPAA Liability of Cloud Service Providers

Author: Ross Leo, Instructor, Training-HIPAA.net

Posted Date:

Summary:A lot of vendors want to participate in the lucrative healthcare market, particularly as the US government has mandated and incented hospitals and other health service providers to move toward electronic patient records. More and more IT services are available as online services, including transaction processing, enterprise resource planning, data storage, voice services and faxing.

Yet many vendors have adopted a policy to not sign a Business Associate Agreement (BAA) that providers require because they lack the legal expertise to understand the associated liability. This is a tricky area, because some cloud services do not require a BAA as they fall into the Conduit Exception clause, meaning they do not have ongoing access to PHI, but rather acted as a “pipeline” or temporary vessel for the data. Other vendors, conversely, will claim compliance and offer BAAs as evidence of compliance, when in reality they may not fully comprehend their services’ role in healthcare providers overall practices and procedures.

This roundtable discussion brings together vendors and HIPAA compliance experts to offer some clarity to the role of BAAs, the applicability of the Conduit Exception, and how all parties involved can take a strategic approach to documenting and validating their adherence to HIPAA.

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About This Webcast

Date:
11/14/2013

Time:
1:00 PM EST (UTC -5)

About This Sponsor
Founded in 1995, j2 Global, Inc. (NASDAQ:JCOM) is an award winning, leading provider of Internet services through its two divisions: Business Cloud Services and Digital Media. The Business Cloud Services Division offers Internet fax, virtual phone, hosted email, email marketing, online backup, unified communications and CRM solutions and operates a messaging network spanning 49 countries on six continents. The Digital Media Division consists of Ziff Davis Inc., which offers technology, gaming and lifestyle content through its digital properties, and Ziff Davis B2B, a leading provider of research to enterprise buyers and leads to IT vendors. As of December 31, 2012, j2 had achieved 17 consecutive fiscal years of revenue growth. For more information about j2, please visit www.j2global.com.